Triphap - Funny Travel Stories and Travel Horror Stories

“Sorry—I crashed you with my exhauster. I have never had an accident in America before,” said the man descending from the driver’s seat of a ginormous RV. He had a thick German accent, and seemed rather nonchalant considering that 29 days into my 2 ½ month long drive cross-country, he’d hit the car I’d purchased for the trip, our “home” for the remaining six weeks.

I’d developed an obsession with photographing each individual animal we encountered in our travels—as if they were friends I’d made along the way and I’d be able to look back at their faces and tell you their name, hometown, and how we’d shared a six pack around the campfire or traded road stories in the motel hot tub. As I pulled the car onto the shoulder behind several others on a tourist-crammed road in Yellowstone National Park—ready to capture on film yet another elk deer—my traveling companion, a friend visiting from Switzerland, insisted on staying in the car to eat her sandwich.

I crossed the road, snapping away. And then I heard a noise like someone dragging metal across asphalt. Enter the accented RV driver.

“Did we get... read more >>

Traveling, and I mean traveling a lot, is a normal part of my life. It is just a by-product of having my family spread across the entire country. I’ve done it so much that I truly think that I could pack in my sleep. But my latest trip turned out to be a bit more problematic.

For starters, this would be my first trip traveling on my own with my almost 2-year-old daughter. She’s a veteran, but trying to predict a 2-year-old is like trying to predict the weather. For example, I could not have predicted that a mere 48 hours before our flight my daughter would wake me up with a full out stomach flu. Nor could I predict that my husband would catch the same thing. Dealing with this along with trying to pack and wrap up some loose ends at work made for quite the hectic countdown to takeoff.

So when we reached the airport and they had no record of my reservation I thought that it was just par for the course. I mean, after the week I’ve had, why would they have my reservation ready... read more >>

We were spending two weeks in Ireland on our honeymoon. We decided to go to the Emerald Isle when my fiancé (now husband) and I looked at each other and said, "I don’t want to go to a beach." Let it be said that neither of us are beach people, I happen to hate the sand and my husband (who is Irish) burns because of his fair complexion. Therefore, keeping this in mind, we decided to do something untraditional and head to Ireland, a place both of us had always been entranced by.

When we arrived in Dublin, we spent a few days there before renting a car and traveling cross country to Killarney on the western shore. Let me just make this comparison, if Dublin is New York, Killarney is the East Village. It’s a very trendy, cool locale, young and thriving with interesting people. However, in the mix of all of that is a group of Irish that have been there before Killarney was cool. Not that I’m calling this group “uncool,” they earn a certain distinction that no trendy “pub kid” could ever dream of having.

Let me explain, one afternoon, upon... read more >>

OURENSE to BILBAO by TRAIN
At Ourense, we joined the queue in the rail station, well I say there was a queue, actually there was an old man being served in front of us. He was in his early seventies I would say and he was dresses in his best falling down gear. Maybe he was a farmer, or just a bit slow, as this ticket-buying exercise he was currently attempting was clearly a bridge too far for him. The time was ebbing away for us as it usually does in times like these and the train was now at the platform. We were served quickly, as I managed to purchase two singles to Bilbao and were quickly ushered onto the train by a lovely little station platform guard, whose job was (as he saw it) to ensure all travellers and tourists were on the train that they bought tickets for.

Some platforms had two trains abutted together but heading in different directions and spotting them was not easy – queue the little man who was an expert in such matters.

After a couple of hours sleep on the train, I was up and... read more >>

Once, when I was younger, my parents took me on my first trip out of the country.  We went to British Columbia, Canada.  The first leg of the trip was spent in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, a
beautiful city modeled after an old English town, full of touristy touches like double-decker buses, fire jugglers, tour boats, and horse-drawn carriages.


We stayed at a motel with an excellent view of the busy, bustling harbor, and right next door to us was the Parliament Building.  I'd never seen such a building before.  It was tall, ornate, old-world,
and majestic, with a large dome over the top, and bristling with statues and intricate details.  There was also a fountain out front. It was enchanting enough during the daytime, but at night, it was even better.


I persuaded my parents to take us out on a nighttime walk to the Parliament Building, since it was just next door.  They obliged, and I was in awe.  The building was covered in chains of brightly glowing
lights, with all its outlines lit brightly against the night sky.  I was so taken aback by the stunning appearance of the building that I got up close to the front and started... read more >>

I am generally fearful around wild animals, including mangy street dogs, disgusting, common household bugs, slippery lizards and relaxed, unthreatening deer. My urban-dwelling youth didn’t provide me with many opportunities to confront my fears, and to be honest, I never really sought out opportunities to acquaint myself with the animal kingdom, opting to confine my earliest travels to sheltered concrete paradises like Madrid, Paris, London and New York City.

My furlessy blissful ignorance was about to change, however, as I embarked on a trip to the Oaxacan Coast—though animals were certainly the last creatures on my mind as I hopped into a hippie-filled pesero taxi in search of unfettered sunshine and soothing, lukewarm ocean water.

San Agustinillo is a hot, sleepy and sweet little village to be found on Oaxaca’s intense Pacific Coast. I fell in love with it from the moment I queasily emerged from the rickety pesero, which responded by splashing warm road-dust all over me as it continued to tumble along. All was suddenly quiet. I could see only three gringos sipping coconut milk on the beach, and a few locals frying up sizzling seafood in their ocean-side shacks. Tranquility, I was convinced that I had found you in... read more >>